steve

The scripts are making backups of your curriculum servers and backup exec is backing these up along with your admin computers. Robocopy will work fine with 2008r2 - its actually now included by default (go to a command prompt and type robocopy /? to check its available) Is there anything better than robocopy - well you could use backup exec on all your servers - you'd need extra licences for them though. As long as the scripts are scheduled and you have the drive / directory structure setup this should all work as before (with the firewall set correctly)

It difficult to understand what's been happening without seeing the scripts. To summarise the situation: You had - 2003R2 server called CacheServer. This had 12.5 BackupExec on. The server has a SCSI card in. A series of robocopy scripts are run on the server. My guess of what's happened in the past is the scripts have copied files from various servers to the cacheserver and then backed up these using backup exec to a scsi device. You have reinstalled the server with 2008R2, unfortunately I don't believe backup exec 12.5 runs on 2008r2. 2008r2 could also be the issue with the scsi device to - it may not have drivers available. There are several things you need to check: Is the scsi device recognised in device manager? What are the scripts doing (does it need a series of folders on a specific drive)? Is the firewall on the server stopping some of the scripts? However, if you don't know what you're doing you need to bite the bullet and tell your boss.

1800 students We spend about £25K on toners etc Then get a replace / renew / new stuff budget of about £180K per year

Its not going too bad, its a bit of a hard slog at times. Just got the module 4 stuff - another report to write :-(

UltraVNC can easily be used to monitor without the user knowing. All you need to do is remove the system tray icon (done via the registry) - we have done this in the past to monitor student PCs without them being able to stop it. Not sure about this but does ultravnc record connections in the windows event log?

We'll soon have 10 members of SLT. We're adding 2x assistant principals come sept. We'll then have - 1x Principal - 2x Vice Principals - 7 x Assistant Principals (I believe they use principal because they think we are a college - but we only have a 6th form) Given we only have about 120 FTE staff, I think its getting a bit OTT. The wage bill for leadership will be around 3/4 million. If we get cuts from the new gov. I can't see them cutting SLT roles .....

Is sims-001 your only server / DC? If so the way you have proposed should be OK. If you had more than one server / DC I'd tend to demote sims-001 first, then do all the move round. I'd tend to look at 2008 (R2 is not supported yet) for the new server and go 64 bit.

Depending on which courses you've done to date, you could do this the other way around - study your MS certs then get credit for them. That way you don't have to pay the OU prices Have a look at MT127 and TM227

Our local authority allow online applications for the year 7 intake: https://admissions.wakefield.gov.uk/admissions/prefs.php And they also have a common application process for sixth forms / colleges: https://www.applywakefield.org.uk/CAP/Home.aspx

We've used Recycool - Recycling mobile phones and printer cartridges with schools for cash for the last few years. Pretty good - never had any bins from them - we just use big old boxes.

If you don't want shared storage, then as you say clustering isn't required. The only real advantage to shared storage is live migration. Over Easter I setup a 5 host clustered hyper-v highly available system. While it wasn't all plain sailing it wasn't that difficult. I would tend to agree VMware is probably the better product but hyper-v is catching up quick and is MUCH cheaper. I did an offline P2V of a DC (2003 R2) which worked just fine and the server is happy churning away as before. Come the summer and all our DCs (2008 R2) will be virtual.

Me neither, but that's because I'm going to see it in real life 5 weeks and counting ......

As powdarmonkey says, each different OS can use a different TTL: OS/Device Version Protocol TTL value AIX 3.2, 4.1 ICMP 255 BSDI BSD/OS 3.1 and 4.0 ICMP 255 Cisco ICMP 254 HP-UX ICMP 255 HP-UX TCP 64 Juniper ICMP 64 Linux 2.0.x kernel ICMP 64 Linux 2.2.14 kernel ICMP 255 Linux 2.4 kernel ICMP 255 Linux Red Hat 9 ICMP and TCP 64 NetBSD ICMP 255 Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8 ICMP/TCP 255/64 SunOS 5.7 ICMP and TCP 255 Windows for Workgroups TCP and UDP 32 Windows 95 TCP and UDP 32 Windows 98 ICMP/TCP 128 Windows NT 4.0 TCP and UDP 128 Windows Server 2003 128 Windows XP ICMP/TCP/UDP 128

A bit like a musketeer - but its more like all for one and me for me!

I'm going to say the V word - Virtualise! We've just upgraded and virtualised (Hyper-V) while doing so. We've allocate 4 processors and 16Gb RAM to our 2008 x64 SIMS VM. That's for 100+ staff (1800 students) using it for lesson registration. You can run the new setup in parallel and rename it later. If you use trusted logins, you need to watch those. All the set up files you need are in the sims\setups folder. With the 2008 SQL stuff available by SOLUS. The way I did it was: P2V of physical server, turn off physical. In place 2008 SQL migration of virtual, backed up databases. Made new 2008 server, installed SQL 2008 / sims. Used backups of data to restore on VM. Renamed VM to match old physical. At any stage I could have gone back to the physical 2005 SQL server if I'd stuffed it up.

I have to say I do like ActivInspire. Its great to see a company spend time and money developing their software. We've had Promethean boards in place now for 7+ years and the software / drivers just keep improving. Keep up the good work. (Such a shame the manufacture of boards was moved out of the UK though)

We have 17 teaching staff missing and 3+ support staff (1 IT Tech). The principal, vice principal and one assistant principal are all stuck. Both head and deputy of sixth form missing (one in Oz, other in Brazil). Some staff are already saying it will be at least a week before they get back. Took on 7 cover staff today. Also had my media Tech poached for cover (he's doing GTP from Sept) which means I'm down to just 2 out of 5 staff. Kids have started to take advantage already .......

I have a technician stuck in Spain and a network manager who can't go on holiday. The schools principal, vice principal and 2 out of 5 assistant principals were all stuck yesterday (don't think that will have changed). On top of that at least 6 other members of teaching staff are stuck in various places around the world. I tongue-in-cheek mentioned on Friday, it was poor planning by the leadership team to have the 2 main staff out of the country at the same time. It'll be interesting to see how things work out over the next week - I seriously doubt if they'll all make it back before the next weekend. Wonder how this will affect peoples leave entitlement / pay? Can I give the network manager his leave back? Should the technician have to use more leave or not get paid?

Within the registers you can add minutes late and comments. If you have the cover module too, the lesson register will be shown on the time-line of the covering teacher too. From the cover side it's nice for staff not to hunt down the register.

firstdirect - they have been doing online banking longer than most and its pretty good. Also have UK call centre

Found an extension lead: IEC Extension Lead, Black, 2m 'Hot Condition' Type | Mains Power | Cables | LINDY UK

Are you after a cable with the IEC 60320 C15 connector on? Have a look on IEC connector - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to see all the variations. EDIT Bet me too it.

I've been doing some this week using SCVMM and it works ok. There are a few minor niggles, if you have team network cards its best to undo those and remove any hardware monitoring software.

Making a Windows 2008 R2 fail over cluster for Hyper-V this week - re-installing 5 servers and few P2Vs too. Next week, upgrading SIMS to SQL 2008.

We are due for our install on 4th May if that's any good.